Project Q&A Inc.

Project Q&A Inc is applying for the Elevate Prize to be able to grow and meet our mission of being the leading nonprofit working to educate, empower, and raise visibility for the over 2.9 million lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) individuals who call rural America home. The Elevate Award would allow us to hire a full-time executive director while providing guidance and mentorship to ensure the organization’s sustainability. This prize would allow Project Q&A to open an LGBTQ center in a rural community and extend our reach further into rural communities. While Project Q&A has had an enormous impact locally, the national growth is small due to time constraints and geography. Currently, Project Q&A has one person who carries out the mission with the help of a few volunteers and the board of directors. Project Q&A’s target audience is spread across 97% of the United States landmass, which hinders rapid growth and implementation. The Elevate Prize would allow Project Q&A to work with innovators to think outside the box and develop an efficient plan to maximize our reach into rural America.

Growing up gay in rural America can be isolating, scary, and hopeless. While society is becoming more inclusive, and now that it is normal for a television show to feature an LGB person, rural America still lags. Project Q&A is pushing to become the leading nonprofit organization raising visibility for and empowering the rural queer community while providing education on issues involving the LGBTQ community. Project Q&A is creating safe spaces in areas of the United States that are slow towards change while championing that everyone should be able to live their life open, authentically, and wherever they choose. As a young gay man, I hope to provide education, empowerment, and visibility to rural queer people. We can work within the system to create change and lift LGBTQ voices by ensuring that everyone has a seat at the table. My goal is that no one should have to grow up doubting themselves, live in fear, or deny their identity because they don’t fit into societal norms. 

Project Q&A works to ensure that the over 2.9 million LGBTQ individuals who call rural America home have access to the resources they need to live their authentic lives. Project Q&A provides community education for LGBTQ individuals, allies, and the rural community at large. The organization works to empower the queer community and our allies to create change within their towns. The most critical work that Project Q&A does is to raise the visibility of the LGBTQ community in rural communities, ensuring that the gay community knows that they are not alone. Agrarian societies tend to be exclusive of the queer community, often unintentional, but they do not allow for representation of the LGBTQ community. LGBTQ individuals often only know one or two other individuals who are out in their communities, when in fact, most communities have on average 4.5% of their adult population (10% of youth) who identify as LGBTQ

Project Q&A is addressing this by providing programs that raise visibility, educate the community, and empower queer individuals. Project Q&A provides programs like Southeast Kansas Pride (week-long Pride), Q&A Talks (educating caregivers of LGBTQ youth), and Educating Educators (empowering rural teachers).

Rural communities have a different rhythm than metropolitan areas. Change is often slow, and when forced, it is rejected. Project Q&A works within the system of rural communities to create change. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink the same for rural America. You can lead a community to diversity, but you can’t make it inclusive. Project Q&A works with the queer community and allies to build alliances, fill community leadership roles, and show cis heterosexual rural communities that the LGBTQ community is no different than they are. While we would like to come into a community with flags waving, pride chants, and rainbows everywhere, we realize that you have to meet the rural community where they are, and that is in professional settings, churches, PTA’s, and other community organizations. It is important to our constituents that they know that the organization is for rural people, led by rural people, that it is not individuals from Los Angeles or New York who influence their communities, but people who grew up in or chose to move to small communities.

Project Q&A is making an impact on the communities we work in by providing support and visibility. For young queer youth, having visibility within your small town often means life-saving affirmation. Just having one supportive adult in an LGBTQ youth’s life can reduce the chances of attempting suicide by 40%. Project Q&A is building queer spaces in rural communities to allow individuals to live authentically. We are working towards educating, empowering, and raising visibility by working with the rural constraints and lifting queer voices within those constraints. As we are growing, we are developing national initiatives such as Q&A Talks, Spirit Week, and Q&A Empowerment. These three national programs raise visibility, educate, and empower the LGBTQ community and our allies. We change the hearts and minds of those within our rural towns by making issues local, giving labels a face, and not focusing on national issues or individuals.